“The word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent.’” Alfred Brendel

To be truly listened to is a gift that few receive in life.

You need a good listener to be truly heard. Being a good listener is both an art and an act of compassion.

Certain callings, such as the ministry, and certain professions, such as clinical psychology, give us rare opportunities to be truly heard.

One needs more than ears to hear another. One must be able to ‘hear’ the silence between the words…to what is not said. And a good listener pays attention to the emotional content of what is being said.

Hearing is not listening.

Often, we listen in order to immediately say something and give our opinion. When we do this, we are listening in order to reply and not to understand.

“We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less,” said Diogenes.

As a society, we make jokes about not being listened to. In a cartoon in last December’s New Yorker, a husband says to his wife, “You know, it would be nice if, every once in a while, I got credit for hearing the first part of almost everything you say.”

Yet, every night, husbands, wives and children go to bed, feeling that someone has not listened to and understood something that was important to them.

Unfortunately, today in many homes, there is a machine that ‘listens’ to the family members. “Alexa” and her mechanical, computer-generated presence tells us, “What do you want?”

She ‘listens’ to us and finds us the nearest pizza and the latest video game or our favorite music of that hour.

Alexa listens to us and gives us things or information, but she will never care why we are asking for these wishes. She can tell us what year Disney’s Cinderella was filmed, but can Alexa ‘feel’ the following lyrics, and why they are important to us? “

A dream is a wish your heart makes

When you’re fast asleep

In dreams you will lose your heartaches

Whatever you wish for, you keep.

We need more than ears, or a reservoir of computer facts, to truly listen to another. We need to listen with empathy, with compassion, without judgment and without an agenda.

There are times in therapy when I am listening to a patient, and I want to say something. I find that, unconsciously and without any awareness, I find myself placing a finger or two on my lips. Those are the times, I must remain silent and listen. Something important is being said that I can hear. However, something even more important, outside of my immediate awareness, is being truly said.

If we can learn to truly listen to another, perhaps, we can also learn to ‘hear’ the wonders of nature, and the Awe and Awareness in the universes and galaxies beyond our feeble eyes and ears.

“I tried to discover,” said Flaubert, “in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.”

Phil Kronk, M.S., Ph.D. is a semi-retired child and adult clinical psychologist and clinical neuropsychologist. He writes a weekly, Friday, online column for the Knoxville News Sentinel’s website, knoxnews.com. He can be reached at (865) 330-3633.